We experimentally investigate the relevance of (asymmetric) outside options in ultimatum bargaining. Building on the generalized equity principle formulated by Selten (1978) we derive three di erent equity rules. These equity rules can explain 43% of all o ers. Our within-subject design allows...

The formation of party preferences is a complex and not yet fully understood process based on a number of factors. This process, which is of great interest for both social and political science, is usually studied using questionnaire data which has proven to be a very reliable yet often costly...

Over the last decades, the United States has become increasingly integrated in the world economy. Very low trade barriers and comparatively liberal migration policies have made these developments possible. What drove US congressmen to support the recent wave of globalization? While much of the...

The focus of this paper is the empirical evaluation of the German Accelerated Vehicle Retirement program, that was implemented in January 2009 to stimulate automobile consumption. In order to adress this question a unique monthly dataset of new car registrations owned by private consumers from...

Optimal voting rules have to be adjusted to the underlying distribution of preferences. However, in practice there usually is no social planner who can perform this task. This paper shows that the introduction of a stage at which agents may themselves choose voting rules according to which they...

Transparency and accountability are often regarded as crucial for good governance and the efficient organization of public affairs. To systematically explore the impact of transparency and accountability on cooperation, we conduct a series of laboratory experiments on a variation of the public...

We study deception choices and deception detection in a tax compliance experiment. We find large systematic differences in individual deception abilities. Tax payers are conscious about their own deception abilities. The empirical outcomes are in line with a theory suggesting that tax payers...

We implement a laboratory experiment in which a principal has to decide on monitoring intensity and pay to investigate whether they are complements or substitutes. Wage level, monitoring intensity, and consequently the desired enforceable effort level are jointly determined by the maximization...

The psychology literature provides ample evidence that people have difficulties taking the perspective of less informed others. This paper presents a controlled experiment showing that this "curse of knowledge" can cause comparative overconfidence and overentry into competition. In a broader...

This paper provides a systematic analysis of individual attitudes towards ambiguity, based on laboratory experiments. The design of the analysis allows to capture individual behavior across various levels of ambiguity, ranging from low to high. Attitudes towards risk and attitudes towards...